


the bed

by marcorooniandcheese



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:44:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcorooniandcheese/pseuds/marcorooniandcheese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can tell what a person is like by the state of their bed.</p><p>(In which an unlikely trio's story is told through starched white sheets and mahogany bed posts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the bed

You can tell what a person is like by the state of their bed.

Raivis Galante’s bed was no exception.

The sheets were starched white, with color coordinated pillow sheets for every day of the week, which was all Eduard’s doing. It smelled faintly of Earl Grey, the tea that Taurys drank early in the morning when Raivis was still asleep and Eduard was out and about, dropping things off, picking things up, and trying to maintain some sort of order in their lives. The quilt that they all snuggled under during cold winter nights was made from scraps and bolts of fabric that Taurys managed to salvage from their ruined clothes and old school uniforms. There were scratches (Raivis liked to call them war scars) all over the mattress under the sheets from crazy nights in university, nights full of vodka and laughter and all sorts of shenanigans. One of the mahogany bed posts was shaved off after an incident involving Taurys’s crazy Belarusian girlfriend; the other three were covered with all sorts of other papers and posters, ranging from Raivis’s drunken Friday night poetry to the receipts that Eduard slowly gathered up buying books. The bed was weak and creaked constantly, and all of them honestly thought that it was going to collapse one day while they were sleeping. Eduard suggested that they sell it to a pawn shop. “With the money, we can just get a new bed, you know,” he said to Taurys and Raivis one day.

But that bed was from home, made with wood from Estonia, a mattress from Lithuania, and sheets from Latvia. Underneath the grease and stench of the city, there was the sharp tanginess of the Baltic Sea on it. Buried underneath the thin mattress were precious memories, memories that Raivis clung onto like a safety blanket during the nights when he woke up from his violent nightmares. Even Eduard, who would express his disapproval about the bed’s ramshackle appearance on his blog, tenderly ran his fingers over the bed every so often.

And now, on an ironically sunny June day, they were throwing it all away.

They’d been delaying this day for years. In university there was always a classmate that would be willing to repair the cracks in the bed frame for a small fee, someone who would patch up the lumpy mattress, someone who would lend them duct tape to tape the broken pieces of the bed post together with. But three days ago, when they were all home together in the kitchen, the bed frame splintered and cracked in half, right down the middle.

There was no other choice but to throw it away. The night before, they tore off the bed sheets and pillows and stuffed the quilt into the closet, right next to Eduard’s old tap dancing shoes. There was no need for the old mattress; Eduard had enough money in his bank account to buy another one. The next morning, just an hour before the garbage truck would come, they hoisted the bed down three sets of stairs and into the street. Taurys, the strongest of the trio, pushed it to the curve. They entered a mundane silence, pulling off the layers of papers from the bed posts, stuffing them into plastic bags.

Then the garbage truck came, big and green, reeking of rotten food. When it pulled over to their curve, a large man came out and started to hoist it away. Wordlessly, Taurys got up and helped him haul it into the back of the truck.

Raivis sniffed and looked over at Eduard. As usual, he expected the Estonian to have an indifferent expression.

To his surprise, Eduard started to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Here I am with the second addition to the Furniture series: the bed.
> 
> I'll be updating the couch either tomorrow or on Wednesday. Don't worry, I'm not orphaning it.
> 
> The same rule about languages applies here. When are in a sentence, the speaker is speaking in a different language. I hope that'll make everything less confusing.
> 
> This fic will probably be around six to seven chapters long; I'm not sure yet. It might even be eight chapters.
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading this, and have a nice day!
> 
> Tumblr: essencedemarco


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